Sigal Etach

Sigal Etach, 27, was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im on October 7.

Etach, who grew up in Beersheba in a family of Ethiopian descent, was remembered by friends and family for her beauty, her contagious laughter, her love to dance and her devotion to her younger siblings, whom she raised herself from age 19.

Her brother, Ofek, told the Kan public radio that Etach could have fled from the party but stayed behind to look for her friend instead.

“She was there with her friend, they all went together, and when all the gunfire started most of her friends left,” Ofek said, relaying conversations he had with survivors.

“But Sigal was the kind of person who would never leave anyone behind or alone, and would always stay with you,” he said. “She could have left and saved her life, but she chose to go back for her friend — and she never came back.” While a group of friends who survived the festival offered for her to jump in their car and flee, “she told her friends to leave and she went back to look for her friend, she said she didn’t want to leave her alone.”

Ofek said they searched the country for four days, desperate for any news of her, before finally being informed that her body was found.

He said that Sigal raised him and their other two siblings from age 19, the moment their mother died eight years ago.

“She was such a lioness, she was someone you could only learn from,” he said, noting that he would now need to take on the responsibility of raising his younger siblings, “but at least I’m a little older.”

Sigal “did so much good in this world, it’s bizarre that she was taken from us.”

Lus Danous, her close friend, told a local Beersheba news site that “there was nothing better or sweeter than this girl. She was incredibly responsible and took care of her siblings with enormous devotion… she always smiled and had good energy, even with all of her problems she dealt with them herself, I never heard Sigal complaining or crying.”

Sigal’s friend Romy Shindler wrote that she got to know her during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, the last major Gaza war, at a preparation seminar for national service volunteers.

“You couldn’t not fall in love with her… she was so smiley and positive, just a happy girl,” Shindler wrote. “My family, my friends, everyone loved you… I can’t remember a time that I saw you sad, even when times were dark.”

“My Sigal, there are no words to describe the pain. During one war I gained you, and in the next war I lost you.”
Source: The Times of Israel